Proud Friend of Israel

June 28, 2010

The Supreme Court has in Heller held the Second Amendment provides to individuals the Federal right to possess guns for personal defense and now in McDonald that states (and local governments) cannot deny that right by banning personal possession of guns. The Court has therefore completely turned against a long-held Liberal and Left doctrine that the Second Amendment applies only to organized state civil militias and that, therefore, individuals do not have a right of personal possession of guns. Why do Liberals and the Left oppose this individual right?

I think the ultimate reason is revealed in the coincidence that the more enthusiasm the Liberal or Left wing has for authoritarian central government, the less sympathy it has for personal gun possession. Personal gun possession has two significances, symbolic and actual. Gun possession represents, as symbol, the supremacy of the free, self-reliant individual. The individual reserves to her/himself the ultimate responsibility of self-defense in civil society and civil defense in civil conflict. As a real instrument, the gun gives the individual the ability to offer armed resistance to wrongful civil authority. Confronting wrongful civil authority was, of course, the origin of the Second Amendment, in the pre-Revolutionary order that Bostonians turn over their guns to the British authorities. Symbol and fact have both featured prominently in Liberal and Left fantasies about all elements of American society. What Liberal or Left fantasy about, for instance, rural America does not situate gun possession in some cracked deviancy? Think of Obama's remark, when raising funds in the campaign in San Francisco, about alienated rural Americans clinging to their guns and religion. For Obama, typical of the Left, the gun is associated with deviancy. For conservatives, contrarily, the gun represents, as in the cowboy mythology, the moral authority of the individal. The gun is only as good as the individual conscience behind it.

The gun is therefore symbol and fact of freedom and freedom's opposition to authoritarianism--the authoritarianism that to some degree Liberals and Left want for America. Like Obama, they look to Europe, where individual, private gun possession is not a right, as the model for us. In Europe, the central state has long kept guns out of private hands, while walking long distances into the world of authoritarianism, in which the central government organizes and imposes social order independently of the wishes of the people. It is opposition to such an arrangement that the gun represents.

Its not a signal of robust growth. The released figures are for May. Consumer durable sales were up. But income rose more than expenditures, which means consumers are saving; that is, consumers are still hedging their bets about the future of the economy and their own futures. I would be surprised if the June numbers and the summer numbers are significantly better. I think we are basically going sideways with maybe a slight drift up. Recovery is fragile, not robust, and will remain so, IMHO, until the structural factors (housing and employment) improve.

Why did it require radar observation from a NASA plane to discover that Calexico moved 31 inches South and lower into the ground in the April earthquake? A movement over that distance should have been observed in shifting of roads and streets along the fault lines. In the 1907 San Francisco earthquake, the fault line in the Central Valley of California moved 20 feet, as observed by shifting of roads and fence lines on opposites of the fault line. Why not in Calexico?

The woman masseuse, who refers to herself as a therapist, who was attacked by Al Gore in a hotel room in 2006, confided in a friend immediately after the event that she had been assaulted and was meeting with a rape crisis unit for help.

Gore's attack was not a first time; it was too bold, too persistent, too practiced. He must have done it at least several occasions before and gotten away with it. He must have been given cover by the aides and whatever security guards he must occasionally have employed. He lived in a protected, ego-centric bubble, which emboldened him.

June 25, 2010

Another cautionary flag is raised on the economy. The much bruited GDP growth of the first quarter has been revised downward across the board. Omniously, consumer investment and spending were revised downward significantly. Consumers were not, and still are not, loosening their purse strings. Consumer spending will not lead the economy into growth. I've written about this matter before and what economic trends to watch over the summer to know if we are headed for a double-dip recession or at least a stall in the recovery.

I ran 5 miles today in 25 intervals! Second 5 mile run this week--first run last Tuesday. I also worked out at Old Park's children's gym. 10 pull-ups on the rings, 5 chin-ups on the monkey bars, 5 pull-ups on the monkey bars, two sets of 12 bench push-ups and 12 bench-back presses. Including the workout: 1 hr 27 minutes.